Labor backbenchers angry over aid switch

Foreign Minister Bob Carr ... “The OECD guidelines provide that if you’re spending money on refugees on your own soil, it can be counted as if you were spending money on refugees in refugee camps around the world.”
Photo: AFP

by
Phillip Coorey | Chief political correspondent

The decision to divert $375 million from this year’s foreign aid budget to help meet the rising cost of caring for asylum seekers has angered Labor backbenchers who say it amounts to a cut in the aid budget, contrary to the official line.

It was revealed on Monday that as the government strives to meet its forecast budget surplus of $1.1 billion for 2012-13, it has hived off $375 million – and possibly more – from this year’s $5.2 billion aid budget to help feed and housing asylum seekers. Recently, there have been more than 2000 boat arrivals a month.

As the federal opposition mocked the government for now being the third-largest recipient of its own aid budget, Foreign Affairs Minister
Bob Carr
defended the reallocation of money. He said it was in line with international guidelines and was needed for food, shelter and other subsistence costs.

“It’s absolutely fair," Senator Carr said. “The fact is the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] guidelines provide that if you’re spending money on refugees on your own soil, it can be counted as if you were spending money on refugees in refugee camps around the world."

“It is what we do when we provide assistance for refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Sudan when people flee from violence or natural disasters.’’

But the backbenchers were not swayed and they disputed Senator Carr’s assurance that the reallocation did not amount to a foreign aid budget cut. In a caucus meeting before the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook was released in October, NSW Labor MP
Janelle Saffin
sought and received an assurance from Treasurer
Wayne Swan
that Australia’s foreign aid budget would not be cut as the government strove to return the budget to surplus.

Ms Saffin stressed at the time that she would consider any diversion towards the immigration a budget as a cut. Yesterday she told The Australian Financial Review that this view stood. “I see it as a cut,’’ she said.

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Ms Saffin, who liaises frequently with aid groups, said she had been inundated with complaints yesterday and had told them all to take their grievances directly to Mr Swan.

She said she understood there were budgetary pressures but said that was Mr Swan’s problem, not hers.

West Australian Labor MP
Melissa Parke
was similarly angry, saying the imagery of cutting aid at Christmas time was unfortunate.

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman
Julie Bishop
, who fought internally two years ago against a policy proposal to cut the aid budget, said “the Gillard government has made itself the third-largest recipient of foreign aid’’, coming after Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

As aid groups continued to blast the government, Tasmanian independent MP
Andrew Wilkie
said the decision was “appalling’’, would “ultimately cost lives’’, and was part of “this government’s track record of not keeping its word’’.

Meanwhile, the Australian Defence Force chief, General David Hurley, told Sky News yesterday the Coalition’s policy to turn back the boats “when it is safe to do so" would not stop them coming.

“This is a whole chain and just doing one bit does not stop the whole chain functioning. They will work around this," General Hurley said.

“Within two days they will come up with a counter. So they are very agile in that sense."